Dear Friends

Dear Friends,

(Originally posted on Instagram stories on 10/27/20)

Get ready because this is gonna be a long one! :)

How We Got Here

When I started Misha & Puff in 2012 (really 2011 as it was a full year in development before our first collection made it out to the world in Sept. 2012) it was because I did not see the kinds of clothes available that I wanted my newborn son wear - clothes that were stylish but hard wearing, made with care and a sustainable ethos. I wasn't thinking at all about building the brand that Misha & Puff has become today. I wouldn't have had a clue how to do that. I couldn't even fathom it. Misha & Puff has grown organically over the years into the lifestyle brand it is today by solving one problem at a time, never straying from the vision for the brand I wanted to create when I started knitting my first piece close to 10 years.

This Year Has Been Rough

It goes without saying that this year has been a challenging one. The strong demand we have seen for our brand coupled with a global pandemic has created extreme strain on the production and logistics side that we did not predict. Not to this degree anyway. Our commitment to keep our knitters regularly employed and to answer customer need around shopping more thoughtfully, led to the launch of our Made To Order program (MTO) - a program I think is the future of fashion, but one that, due to the volume, pressured us into areas of growth we were not ready for. Pre-pandemic we had started to put measures in place for expanding our production as well as partnering with a new logistics warehouse. Both things rolled out during quarantine but not nearly as smoothly as we had hoped, as you can imagine.

The difficulties of all of this has shown up the most acutely in our customer care and support. We were grossly unprepared for the sheer volume and complications that would arise.

The stress we have caused YOU has made me deeply sad.

Many of you have been with us since those early days. Riding with us, supporting us, sharing in our joy and success of creating together a business that just wants to do good.

Regardless of how we got to this point, I feel a personal responsibility to you to make things right.

That is why we decided to pause the business last Wednesday evening.

Why We Paused the Site

The pause has allowed us to evaluate our customer experience practices, bring on additional staffing, and develop processes to improve how we interact with our customers. Customer experience is a discipline of continuous improvement and I guarantee you that we still will not always be perfect or get it right every time, but we have created a focus on your experience that makes sense relative to where the brand is today.

We have evaluated all of our timelines and realized we are very much still affected on the logistics side at every touch point by this pandemic.

I think for customers, it's is hard to understand the reality of this, as many larger businesses are presenting as business as usual. We do so want business (and life) to go back to normal.

It is our job to present to you the situation as it really is. Without softening it up because we wish it were better. Transparency around launch times, shipping times and everything else.

Including when we don't know. As this is also a byproduct of working during a global pandemic. There is a severe slowdown of communications at every single physical location between Peru and you. As less people are working at any one location at a time, answers to questions take longer. "Where is my package?" is a normal and reasonable question easily answered at all other times. But incredibly complicated now. We are working around the clock to do everything within our team to address this and make sure we know and have answers before they get asked.

Our View on Demand

I think you may have noticed outside of the pandemic, the level of interest for the brand has significantly grown this year. We are grateful more people are choosing to make conscious decisions about what sort of brands they wnat to see succeed in this world. From day 1 it has been our mission to create meaningful, long lasting, products from the best materials as to honor the artisans that make them and the earths natural resources.

We are glad to see trends moving away from fast fashion and towards smaller businesses like ours who are not beholden to inflated valuations, investors interested in untenable growth, the constant churning out of product and the nauseating practice of intentional overproduction.

More visibility and demand means we do aim to make more. BUT (and this is a big one that seems to create a lot of hostility and stress) our production is hard, and we scale deliberately and slowly and without compromising quality or integrity.

This takes time, and it will always take time.

We will continue to have less than demand. Not because we want to but simply because we wil not answer the call to make more AT ANY COST.

I imagine this to be a foreign concept in a world where it has become normalized to neglect all else and scale while while demand is hot.

But what is truly responsible? What is truly sustainable?

Why Don’t We Just Make Popular Styles?

I have had customers comment: "Why even bother making anything else - just make the things with highest demand" (i. e. popcorn sweaters and skating pond skirts).

I would like to answer that here as it is tied intimately to sustainability and our long term commitment to communities where we have developed partnerships.

Hanging your entire business on two styles is not sustainable. Rapidly scaling production on a narrow catalog (finding and training 10x knitters) to meet demand for a short period of time, only to have demand wane and those knitters be out for jobs, is not sustainable It's only a side note that it doesn't interest me to be that kind of brand. I enjoy making new things. After all, that is how you find the next great thing!

It may surprise you to know that although I have been making the skating pond skirt since 2012, it was not very popular at first. In fact it was almost cut from the line a few years later due to low sales. So you can see, it can take some time for things to catch on. We are a slow burn. Even though you think we may be in fire, and I know many of you are new, we have been at this for a while. Slow and steady.

Why Do We Have So Many Drops?

Why not just make more of each item and have less drops?

This is a great question and here is visibility into that:

We have a really strong commitment against overproduction. We are conservative buyers. Our garments and yarn have a very long lead time for production. The best time is 6 months. But we even start way before that to get to the volume we need. That means ordering within the same season isn't an option. We aren't able to launch a collection and then turn around and place a reorder and receive it within the same season. That coupled with the fact that we want out knitters working year round. Not just for two big seasons a year. Because within those 6-9 months only a portion are actually knitting time. There are months at the front end for yarn production and at the back end for shipping and logistics. We really want our knitters knitting 12 months a year. Our solution is to have more collections with staggered deliveries. This also helps a small business stay small but consistent. Having grossly increased volume only twice a year hits all areas of operations in an outsized way. Not the kind of business we are interested

We really see this as a path to a more sustainable fashion calendar.

Everything we do, we do with care and integrity.

What This Means For You, our Dear Customer

Now, let's get to the part about what does this all means for you, our customers, going forward.

It means that when you reach out to us via email you should hear back from us more quickly.

We will have clear and realistic timelines everywhere on our site and in all email communications about what you can expect for response times and shipping windows, as well as those of you wishing to have repairs done.

Better management of the actual time it takes for our small team to accomplish these tasks will hopefully result in less stress and uncertainty for you.

It also means more transparency around overselling. This is an unfortunate function of having high volume (like really high!) on our site during launches. We owe you clear communications around this in a timely manner.

* we get asked a lot "how much do you make". Here's an analogy: we have the customer volume of a stadium concert but we are selling tickets to an intimate theater. That's the reality.

The Role of Social Media in Customer Service

Ok so back to social media.

The tension of our demand vs. availability has created a lot of stress. For customers as well as our company. And the people in the company. I'm talking physical stress but let's not neglect mental health.

It has become normal after every single launch for an outpouring of upset customers to publicly express displeasure and disappointment from things such as how Shopify (our web platform) may be delayed in loading product to to dismay at "the wrong people" buying and how could we let all of this happen. We must be doing something wrong.

This is really stressful for my team. Our desire has always been to make lovely and meaningful things. And my team is SMALL. We are not Ticketmaster. We are not Nike. We are not Amazon. Please don't expect us to be bigger than we are or want to be.

Please understand what that means. It means things like, our tech team is 2 people (they happen to be geniuses who do the work of 10 people but they are still just two real live humans) We won't police the internet for fakes, and forgeries and resellers. We don't have the staff. We won't scale manufacturing faster than our comfort level because it's more important to make fewer, perfect items than more items that do not meet our standards for quality and ethics.

I hope you are beginning to see the tension between making every person really happy and running a business with true integrity - staying true to our original mission.

The reality is, some people will be unhappy. And that has to be ok, too.

For that reason we have decided to limit comments on Instagram for the near future until we can better understand how to provide customer service up to our new standards on that platform.

I realize that has the potential to be an unpopular solution. Here's my thinking .

We are Setting Boundaries…

I (Anna, founder and creative director) have run our Instagram account almost continuously since 2012. For a few months here and there I have taken breaks and handed it over to other team members, but it's mostly me. And I like it. I think, in fact, I must love it.

I am really PROUD of the work we do here at Misha & Puff, and this is my space to show it off. I like to talk about it. What can I say, I'm a proud mom :)

I'm proud of my team. I'm proud of the work we have created and all the goodness and joy we have been able to put into the world.

I love our shoots and our models and our creative collaborators. I love you guys and your kids and the pictures you are inspired to take of them. I love seeing it! This account is my reward for all the hard work - seeing these pieces.

BUT (and here it comes), things have changed. In the last 6 months I have seen increased engagement but also increased anxiety manifesting in anger and negativity.

And with our increased demand and volume, coupled with our taxed customer service team I have seen Instagram turn into customer service. Or rather our customers desire to make it so. I have seen a turn in language from respectful exchange to outright demanding (when will you address X. . . ) I have seen outright anger and personal boundaries being crossed (my personal and private IG account being tagged by a customer)

…and will continue to work hard to find spaces where we can have meaningful conversations

I want to stay in this space. I really do. But in order to do so, I need to create boundaries.

I understand this might be a really crazy thing for a BRAND to say, right?!?

That's not what brands do!

Well, I have thought almost constantly about this over the last week, as I really care deeply about the relationship we have here.

I think it's no longer possible to have an emotional and sensitive founder-run IG account while also demanding the impersonality of a giant company.

I would like to stay the former. But need boundaries. (that is theme of late 2020, right?)

I'm claiming this account as my living room, rather than a street corner.

You all are invited in.

It's my space where all are welcome, but it's a curated space.

I would like to maintain the joyful and informative exchange of info, BUT, it's still not customer service.

(Yes, at some point we would love to extend further our CX team so they may be involved here but that is not today)

Comments may stay off for a while. If I feel like it's not possible for me to respond (and I see many comments around questions being ignored on this platform but it's just not always feasible to get to all of them all the time.)

This is also a really difficult space to engage in long meaningful and complicated conversations. That is for email. This isn't about transparency or lack of it. This is about lack of resources to address extremely complicated and sensitive issues in multiple platforms simultaneously. We have chosen email as our single source of CX for the tike being. And we are putting all our energy into making that fabulous.

I do acknowledge a real need for a space that fosters a free exchange of info and concerns and ideas. It is my desire to create a new space where issues can be discussed and addressed by both us and you in easy to find threads. We will be spending more time on Facebook to nurture the community developed around the brand and to understand how we can improve your experience. Those wanting more info than you can find here will be able to discuss and ask questions of us and the community in this Misha & Puff run group. I think there is a real need for this kind of community (not a BST) where we can discuss and share courted and you, our customers can have direct access to a M&P team member who has time to address your needs that may not be assisting exist under CX (think fit, and color and preview cart etc) Please stay tuned as start to ramp this up before the year is over.

Thank You So Much

Ok, if you are still reading: Thank you. Deeply and personally, thank you. We are almost to the end of the most challenging year since we started this. But within all the struggles, there has been so much good. And there is still more to come before the year is out!

We will continue to focus on always striving to be better. As this is always the goal. We never reach perfection but that doesn't stop us from trying. It's the act of trying though, where you find the real magic and growth.

Love to you,

Anna